This article walks through the process of using WebSpy Vantage to create a comprehensive Remote Desktop Report by extracting information about remote desktop sessions (RDP) from your firewall log files. I'm using Firewall logs from Microsoft Forefront TMG, but you could just as easily use logs from other firewalls, such as the packet filter logs from Sophos UTM, or connection end events from Cisco ASA. The general process is the same. Let's get started.

Reverse proxy reporting (using WebSpy Vantage Ultimate) is a great way to gain insight to how the Internet is using your published web sites or web applications. Forward proxy reporting is all about the users accessing content on the Internet from within your corporate network. Reverse proxy reporting is the opposite. When you have a [...]

Firewalls and proxies generate a lot of log data. Multiple gigabytes per day are commonplace now. The log files themselves are generally simple flat text files. Their size comes from the sheer volume of entries, not from being rich data types. The log file size not only consumes disk space during logging, storing, and archiving, but [...]

What is an Alias? As defined by Google, in computing terms, an alias is: An alternative name or label that refers to a file, command, address, or other item, and can be used to locate or access it. When it comes to WebSpy Vantage, an alias takes log data that does not make sense and [...]

As a typical IT department, we log a lot data. Loads of it. Thanks to various regulatory requirements, we need to log more and more data from more and more sources. That's a lot of mores! We are also required to mine more information from those logs, and need keep these logs in their original form for [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]

Update: The technique described in this series of blog articles has since been improved upon, and integrated into WebSpy Vantage 3.0 via the Origin Domain summary that is present in when analyzing any log files that contain URLs. We've called this feature Site Clean. It is also available in our separate Fastvue Reporter applications. See further details about our [...]